MySpace

A very long time ago I set up a simple MySpace page out of curiosity. It was nothing more than a simple bio; nothing that would give away any deep secrets about me, nothing to inform a reader anything more than there is a guy in this world whose name is Scott.

A year or so later I find out that my niece lives on MySpace – who incidentally is only eleven. I told her about it while visiting with her in Houston, showed my profile to her, and watched as she clicked on my photo until you could see electrons in orbit around a single atom of my nose.

When I had gone home, I wrote her a note using MySpace, and found that she was no longer on my list of friends. I called her up and asked what happened, but she played Jimmy-the-Dunce, saying she didn't know.

I let it go. Fine. Big, dorky Uncle Scott's picture was too embarrassing to include on her list of friends. It hurt my feelings, but I let it go.

That is my brother's daughter. My sister's daughter is only ten, who recently got her own MySpace account and is masquerading as a fifteen-year-old. She found me and added me to her friends list a couple weeks back. My sister too, and a couple cousins as well. They've been leaving comments on my photo – derogatory comments, suggesting that there are younger photos I should use instead. I didn't feel like commenting back and frankly I didn't have the time, and still don't. Work has me nailed to the wall and I shouldn't be spending the time to write this.

I talked to my brother and mentioned about how his daughter deleted me from her list of friends. He concluded that she was probably hiding from me. I gladly accepted that explanation because it hurt my feelings a hell of a lot less than my own explanation. But last night, my sister commented something to the effect that she found out the real reason my brother's daughter had deleted me, and that she, my sister, was deleting me for the same reason. Fix your page, she said, and then add her back.

Then her daughter wrote me a comment soon after, saying to fix my page, that I am married and don't comment back, that I was spying on her.

Excuse me?

I've been steaming about this ever since. The very first thing I did is deleted the MySpace account altogether. What started out as an experiment has turned into me being accused of being a voyeur or worse.

I'm so mad about this, on so many different levels. The absolute gall of my sister, and the disrespect! If I were there in Houston there would be a whole lot of attitude adjustments going on. To think that they feel they can treat me that way. Like I'm competing in some beauty or popularity contest. Since when do I have to earn the right to be friends with family?

You see, this is the kind of thing that fractures me from friends and family, the kind of thing that makes me want to scream, "Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?!"

 

Football and Life As I See It

Some of you are probably wondering what I have been doing that I can't even visit or update my blog. It's a lot of things, really. Some I can't talk about, others are just not that interesting. Does anyone really want to hear all the minutiae of my job? It's exciting, believe me—but only to me and the few guys I work with.

I can't resist at least putting in a plug for my football team, the Dallas Cowboys, who are doing the impossible this year. They've won every game this year except for that heart breaker against the Patriots. But I have to say, this is shaping up like a really good movie. On one side, you have the New England Patriots, who have achieved dominance in the salary cap era. But unlike my beloved Cowboys of the 90's, they aren't withering away into obscurity. Quite the opposite—they are the toast of the league, and quite possibly one of if not the very best team that has ever been assembled. That's debatable.

And then you have the Cowboys. Once great, now a has been. Ever since we lost Troy Aikman, we've gone through a host of quarterbacks. To be the quarterback of the Dallas franchise used to mean you were the best of the best. There was a mystique. The search seemed hopeless. The magic was dead. And then came Bill Parcells, who said let there be a quarterback, and behold, there was one. An undrafted free agent from Eastern Illinois quietly signed a contract to be the third string quarterback behind Quincy "Where is he now?" Carter and Chad Hutchinson, both of whom no longer play in the NFL.

You might have heard of him. He just signed a contract for 67 million dollars. He's young, good looking, has that small town, all around nice guy feel to him. He's been connected with first with Jessica Simpson, Carrie Underwood and most recently Britney Spears, though he denies anything to do with the latter, saying that they were simply at the same party. Riiiigggght... He probably doesn't inhale when he smokes either.

It didn't last with Ms. Underwood because, as she said in an interview with a reputable newspaper (let's just say, inquiring minds want to know), that he was just too much into football. Awww.

His name? Aw come on. You already know it. Of course you do. If you don't, then wait until February when they ask him the question they ask every Superbowl winning quarterback: Where are you going now?

The Patriots put a putting good stomping on the Cowboys a couple weeks back. I watched it in the enemy lair of one Mr. Schprock, who forced me to give him a high five when Randy Moss caught what at first glance seemed to be a touchdown. In the third quarter the Cowboys moved into the lead, the first such occurance for the Pats all year. Mr. Schprock was not happy. But he had the last laugh as the Pats tore us limb from limb, punching it into the end zone when the Cowboys were already buried. But if you were paying attention, this was a much better game than it seemed.

That's all I'll say about it now. We'll be back. And this time we'll be loaded with all our starters. And we're getting better every week.

So maybe football has me a little distracted.

I can't write about it here. Most of my readers have already clicked over to comment on the first line.

I haven't been writing, or even reading for that matter. I need to get back into it, but life is pulling me in different directions right now, but I can't let it tear me apart. Life is good and all those type of disclaimers, but I am distracted by family stuff, work stuff, and the daunting threat of moving across country. I'm not even sure I have the money to do so, and I'm taking a hard look at it. But the idea of digging into the financials is intimidating, and could destroy the world as we know it. Sometimes I think about when I was young, single, no responsibilities. Man, that was a piece of cake. But now I've crested forty and I'm losing my youth in ways that I can feel and see.

I don't know what I'm saying exactly. But I have to do something different than what I'm doing.